


Gardening for the Dead

by havocthecat



Category: Changeling: The Lost, Mage: the Awakening, Vampire: The Requiem, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Circle of the Crone, Female Friendship, Gen, Mekhet, New World of Darkness - Freeform, Occultation, Thrysus, Ventrue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2017-12-27 09:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/pseuds/havocthecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nissa Adelman is a Ventrue in the Circle of the Crone. This is the night-to-night story of a woman trying to make it through her unlife in Chicago.  Aislin, her friend, is a Mekhet of the Alucinor bloodline. Sometimes they run into other creatures, including Miriam Graves, a Changeling, and Melia Eidolon, a Thrysus Mage.</p><p>In other words, a series of vignettes based on roleplaying characters. <a href="http://havocs-cry.dreamwidth.org/57125.html">Story is also archived on Dreamwidth.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gardening as Therapy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nissa is a gardener. She's also a vampire.

The sky above the arboretum wasn't black, couldn't be black, because in Chicago there were too many lights to see the stars. It was a cloudy charcoal, no less dreary because of its familiarity. Nissa hadn't seen a blue sky in decades; she hadn't been out of the city to see the stars in longer than that.

"Mnemosyne's insane, you know that?" Nissa dug in the soil, not bothering with a trowel. The dirt clung to her hands and her fingernails were rimmed with grime as she yanked up another piece of crabgrass and tossed it to the side. Again. Their shrieks of pain were tiny, at least compared to the ones she'd heard in Halph's dream. The Fisher King had invaded. Had presented himself as storming the beaches of fucking Normandy. Fucking D-Day. Trying to take back the faerie token from the vampires. "PTSD for all. Lucky us."

The grape vines growing in the temple were almost floor to ceiling and the apple trees were still heavy with fruit. If she didn't keep up with the weeding, the plants would be choked out and they'd stop producing fruit. She had to kill the crabgrass and the dandelions and all the other weeds so that the bigger, more important plants would live. Just like they'd nearly gotten Halph killed so that they could keep getting magical artifacts.

"Stick us in Nazi uniforms. Driving SS jeeps. I get it; we're the bad guys." Nissa paused and settled her back against the apple tree. The crabgrass was whimpering as it wilted away. Nissa shut it out and rose. She'd go to the library. Research. Look for a fair folk's weakness, anything she could find. Not just cold iron.


	2. Gardening as Therapy

Nissa grubbed around in her garden, yanking weeds out of the ground and tossing them off to the side. She fell backward in the dirt and stared up at the sky. The moon bathed everything in a soft glow, but there were no stars tonight. There weren't often stars in Chicago.

"I could live on the moon. Not like I need air. Just central heating." Also animals to feed on, otherwise she'd need an extra comfortable bed.

"Why would you want to live on the moon?"

Nissa lifted her head. Aislin was standing just outside her garden. She looked like she was studying Nissa. She also looked like she was hoping her heels didn't sink into the soft mud.

"Did you want something?" asked Nissa. Other than the heels.

"I want to see Finding Nemo," said Aislin. It was a statement, not a question. An invitation?

"It's a kid's cartoon," said Nissa. She should probably stand up. She just didn't feel like it.

"It's twenty-first century American culture," said Aislin. "And it relates to the name that Mother goes by lately."

"Pop culture 101, huh?" Nissa pulled herself out of the dirt and made a stab at brushing it off. "We can watch Brave after that. At least we don't have to worry about popcorn."


	3. Clearing the Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nissa vents. To her mandragora. This is actually a pretty useless proposition.

"I think we're the White Witch," said Nissa, leaning back against the wall of her room. She was talking to her teasel, which was a luminous white. Not that it was listening too carefully. It was too busy adoring her. Creepy. Why did she feed it her blood anyway? That never went well.

"I mean, it only makes sense," continued Nissa. She stood upright and started pacing back and forth. "We're the Circle of the Crone, we're the bad guys, but the people who are saying that are other vampires. We're all the bad guys."

~soft hands kind voice salty sweet food clears dirt weeds~ crooned the teasel, its leaves fluttering in a nonexistent wind.

"Seriously, are you capable of any kind of rational discussion these nights, or are you just going to sing my praises for the rest of eternity?" snapped Nissa.


	4. Fetch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miriam Graves tracks down Naomi. She just doesn't know what she wants to do after that.

"Chicago is a big city. You could get lost here. I don't mean just turned around and needing directions, I mean lost in a big way. You can stumble into another world and realize that everything you've thought was true isn't. And it is. Everything is true and false at the same time, real and not. Eventually, you don't know what you are any more, and that's when you stop realizing you're lost."

It wasn't so much that she'd been lost, but it wasn't like you could come out and tell anyone that you'd been stolen away by the Fair Folk and replaced by a doppelganger. Especially when your doppelganger - your fetch - didn't realize that she was the fake.

"You're monologuing," said the woman tied to the chair. "I hate when the bad guys monologue. Also, could you stop making my face look like Pinnocchio? It's making chills go up my spine." She sounded bored, but underneath it, she was angry. She could hide it from everyone else, but Miriam knew what anger sounded like. Especially coming from someone wearing Miriam's face. Someone who sounded like what Miriam could have become.

"I'm not wearing your face," said Miriam. People thought trees died when they were cut down, but the wood of the chair hummed deep in her bones. Wood got stronger with age. Heartwood was the strongest of all. She didn't walk closer to the chair or to the woman, just stood an arm and a half's length away, and talked to her. "You stole mine. Did you forget that? Did you spend so long with my life that you forgot what you are?"

She'd spent so long with her legs planted into the ground that it was easy to stay in place, to feel the roots she no longer had. Even if Miriam had torn herself out of the tree, become a person again, she was still the heartwood.

"I have friends," said the fetch. "They'll come looking for me. I'm the soft touch, but they'll kill you. Let me go and I'll pretend this never happened."

Something about the fetch's eyes made Miriam want to stare at them and never stop looking. Maybe it was the way they were blue and brown, hazel like Miriam's were. She hadn't seen her own eyes in years. Maybe it was the anger, fierce and burning, that reminded Miriam of how she used to be. Maybe it was the plaintive note in her voice, because under all that anger was a terrible desperation. 

What it was didn't matter. It didn't. Miriam sloughed it off, tilted her head, and studied the fetch. Her fetch. She wasn't real, but she had thoughts and feelings.

"You're as much a victim as I am," said Miriam. "They built you to look like me, talk like me, to act like me. They built you to be me, but only so that no one would notice I was gone and come looking."

"What are you on?" asked her fetch. She twisted her hands behind her, trying to unbind the knots, but the fetch hadn't spent years learning how to tie and untie them. Her life hadn't even gone in the direction Miriam had meant hers to. Miriam had found her fetch weeding a plot of land in the park. No purse, no address, no ID. Whatever had happened to her, neither of them had a charmemd life.

The Lords and Ladies of Arcadia had used her fetch, just like they'd used Miriam. She was a tool, built for a singular purpose. How could she be angry at her fetch? It wasn't her fault. They should both be mad at the Fair Folk instead. They ought to work together.

"It's okay," said Miriam. She practiced a smile, stretched her face and reshaped the wood under her skin. It almost felt real. "If they find out you and I talked, they'll kill us both. Or they'll try. Do you really have friends?"

The fetch rolled her eyes. "Do I look stupid enough to tell you if I were lying?"

"I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, then," said Miriam. She stepped forward, closer to her fetch, but still out of reach until she was behind her. Then Miriam untied the knots, her fingers nimble even though she was shaking. This was a leap of faith.

The fetch ripped her hands out of the ropes and whirled. She leapt, knocking Miriam to the ground. The breath rushed out of Miram's lungs and her head thunked against the ground. A low throbbing started at the base of her skull. "How did you do it? Who sent you?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, not everyone is after you," snapped Miriam. Ten years ago, she'd have been scared, but she'd learned to be strong. Whatever had happened to her fetch, whatever her fetch was going to do to her, Miriam wasn't afraid. She'd been through worse.

"What are you?" asked the fetch, drawing back and sitting on the ground with a liquid grace. Her eyes were wide, not norrowed in anger, and her curiosity was piqued. 

If she'd realized it was going to be that easy to placate her fetch, Miriam would have lost her temper at the start of this. "I'm you," said Miriam. She lumbered up and sat cross-legged on the ground, across from her fetch. "The original. You're the copy, just like I said. Naomi, you and--"

"Nobody knows that name," interrupted the fetch. "That's not my name any more."

"It's not mine either, not any more," offered Miriam. Her mouth twitched and her smile showed up for an instant. It felt like the start of a real one, just maybe. Even if her fetch only thought she was human. "We can help each other."

"I doubt that," scoffed her fetch, but the words rang hollow. She stopped and listened, her eyes distant as she focused on something Miriam couldn't see. "My friends are almost here. You should go. Meet me in the community garden a week from now. You bring the umbrella; I'll bring the straitjacket."

Miriam nodded and scrambled to her feet. "Funny." Whoever her fetch had become, she was suspicious and paranoid, not to mention angry. On the plus side, she didn't seem inclined to homicide. It was amazing what Miriam considered a plus these days.

That was all right. It was a start. Miriam went out the back door, thanking the wood and asking it to be strong. Just in case she needed its favor later.


	5. Milk Cartons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miriam Graves is a Changeling. Naomi is her fetch, the creature left to take her place when the Fair Folk took her.

"You're from Chicago too?" asked Naomi. She leaned forward, halfway across the booth, her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee she hadn't touched. Her pale skin had a sickly glow under the fluorescent lights, and the server's steps echoed as she walked back to the empty kitchen, leaving them alone in the diner.

"I was born here, grew up here. Had my bat mitzvah at the same temple, but there's only one picture of us there, because I'm you," said Miriam. She took a deep breath and let it out over a slow count of ten. "You were created to take my place. So that no one would discover that I was gone."

"Is that why you look like a freak?" However skeptical Nissa looked, something sparked in her eyes. Something Miriam saw when she looked in the mirror. 

"The Fair Folk, or the Kindly Ones. Don't call them by their names," cautioned Miriam. She sipped at her tea. She'd missed honey. "You don't want them to notice you. They kidnapped me and twisted me into something else. But they used you too."

"I hate to break it to you, sweetie, but my face got stuck on a milk crate anyway," said Naomi. Her grin had an edge to it, and Miriam drew back.


	6. Working Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naomi and Miriam spend some more time together at the greasy spoon.

"So who's the weird-looking guy you came here with?" Naomi was slouched back against the patched red vinyl, her feet propped up on the booth Miriam was sitting on. She nodded out the window to where Ben had walked her to the door and then moved on, but only at Miriam's insistence. "He looks reptilian."

"A very overprotective friend," said Miriam, settling in and making sure she wasn't stepping on the hem of her skirt. "Or a self-appointed bodyguard. Take your pick."

"All right, I'll bite." Naomi rolled her eyes and choked back a slug of coffee, then grimaced. " _What's_ the weird looking guy you came in here with?"

"He hasn't told me yet," said Miriam. She smoothed her thin paper napkin down in her lap and then blew across her tea cup. "I'm respecting his right to his secrets."

"You're not nosy enough," said Naomi. She gulped at her coffee and shuddered. "This is terrible. What do people see in it?"

Miriam nodded down at the chipped mug in front of her. "I have tea. When did you start drinking coffee?"

"College," said Naomi. She paused, looking pensive, then shook her head. "No, that can't be right. Not if you say you were drinking tea in college. If you're right, anyway."

"You still don't believe me?" asked Miriam. She poured a dollop of cream into her tea from the tin pitcher and stirred it in. "It's true."

"Fairies are real, they steal people away, and I'm basically your voodoo doll so no one misses you and goes hunting?" Naomi eyed her coffee and then shoved it off to the side. "Can't imagine why I'd be skeptical. You could just be really good at stage makeup."

"No one else has noticed a thing," said Miriam. She wrapped her hands around her tea cup and waited. It hadn't cooled down quite enough yet for her to drink. 

Why didn't Naomi get it? Or why was she asking so many questions? It wasn't that hard to believe, not if you could see enchantments and no one else could. Did she have an ulterior motive? Was she working for the Fair Folk instead of hiding from them?

"Seriously, I didn't want to grow up to be in the plot of a DeLint novel," muttered Naomi.

"No, _I_ never wanted that," said Miriam. She missed her family, but she couldn't do that to them. She couldn't be the person she used to. She'd always be the woman who went into the garden and listened to the trees instead of the woman who wanted to know what everyone else thought. "You never grew up, remember?"

"This will never not be creepy," said Naomi. "Why are you here? Do you want to be besties? Because that's never going to happen."

"I have a plan," said Miriam. She smiled and reached into her purse for the papers. "I want to make sure we can all stay safe from them. You, me, and my friends."


	7. Unintentional Recruitment Drive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eldritch horrors are making their way out of the underworld. That's because the world is ending, and the mother of all monsters is coming to devour her brood. Nissa tries to make sure something survives.

Whoever she was, whatever had happened, the woman was fresh meat, or she would be if she didn't stop bawling over the corpse that had left blood coagulating all over the sidewalk. Whoever the dead guy was, he was wearing a three piece suit and the cell phone that had fallen out of his hand was the latest model. It had all cost him a lot of money. 

"Come with me if you want to live," tried Nissa. At least twentieth and twenty-first century pop culture references weeded out most of the eldritch horrors. The ones that weren't telepathic, anyway. 

The woman looked up at her, her mascara making black streaks down her face. "What?" she asked, swiping at her cheeks with the back of her fist. "How could you say that? Quote from a movie?"

Maybe she was a vampire. A werewolf. Probably not a zombie. Maybe something else. Also probably not an ancient creature emerging from the underworld via the deep dark, though, not if she recognized the line. 

"You wouldn't believe the hell I go through trying to get people to listen if I don't start quoting Terminator," said Nissa. She crouched down over the body. His blood smelled sour. Probably whatever had killed him had done it faster than the disease would have. Probably he would rather still be alive anyway. 

"Why?" asked the woman. 

~What killed him?~ Nissa asked the weeds poking out of the sidewalk. They waved in a chill breeze, one that Nissa couldn't feel on her skin, but coming out of the dark alley. 

~Cold. Winter. Fear.~ Plants never did translate their thoughts to English very well, or even to human concepts. On the other hand, this time Nissa didn't need to decipher anything. Ymirson's brood was the only winter that plants were afraid of. Time to get out of here, and get the woman to go with her if she could.

The stars were bright above them in the night sky. Every single one was visible, through the clouds and the smog, and even brighter than Chicago's street lights. There were thousands of them, all staring down at the city. Watching them. Watching Nissa. 

"Look, I can't really promise that you'll live if you come with me." Nissa had an umbrella stuck in her pocket. She yanked it out and pushed a button; it opened up and the feel of the stars' eyes on her skin eased. "If you want to come with me, you'll have a better chance of surviving. You will have to join a cult and worship the cthonic gods of your choice. On the plus side, we don't ask for tithes."


	8. Daddy Dearest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nissa's sire walks out of the deep dark. She's not sure what hell spit him out. Either way, she doesn't want him.

The deep dark had been bleeding onto the surface for two weeks. Cockroaches skittered around it, birds flew high and built their nests even higher to avoid it, and the only wild creatures to sniff around its edges were the wolves that had slunk out of it one midnight. Nissa had watched them do it; talked to them every now and again. They weren't feral, per se, but after an uncounted time prowling around the edges of Tartarus, they stank of death and they were faster to deal it out than other wild creatures.

Vampires were crawling their way out too, slower than the wolves, but faster than the deeper monsters, the wyrms and everything that the Nosferatu feared. Every vampire that had ever been in the deep dark, Nissa included, had left a piece of themself behind. She didn't know if she had a doppelganger ready to steal her life, or if there were just a bunch of hungry monsters who had been feeding off each other for uncounted ages. 

She stepped back from the mouth of the alley, away from the velvety darkness that even the streetlights couldn't touch, and leaned back against the brick wall of the apartment building. Something was on its way out. There were slow footsteps and shapes that shifted against the black. Vampires, she thought, or something human-shaped at the very least, and whatever it was had almost reached the surface. 

Nissa pulled a handful of barley out of the pouch she kept with her. She'd learned more from Kalfou than anyone knew. It took time to coax things from him. Time or amusement, and more than a little bit of flattery. Time she didn't have. It took a moment to focus her will, to pull her scattered thoughts together and suppress the sickening horror she felt at the thought of the deep dark preying on the nearby humans.

Whatever it was, it stopped. Waited. The barley was there, a distinct presence, almost glowing against the deep dark. She heard a rasping sound as it stopped and turned. It backtracked, but it would find another way out. Times like this, they always found another way out.

Behind it, though, she heard footsteps. They didn't drag, didn't sound hesitant. Nissa saw a silhouette. Someone was striding through the deep dark, not stopped by the barley and its powers. A vampire, then, and either old or insane - or both. Probably both. Her sire stepped out of the deep dark and into the dim streetlight. He paused and straightened his suit jacket, glancing around at the rest of the world. When his gaze landed on Nissa, he studied her, his eyes old and flat and inhuman, even as he smiled at her. 

All told, Nissa would rather have dealt with the monster she'd driven away. It figured. Of course she'd be here when Edgar stepped out of the deep dark. Of course he couldn't be dead and out of her hair forever.

"Dr. Adelman!" He stepped toward her, friendly and eager on the surface, and it took everything she had to hold herself back. She'd sworn she wouldn't run from him. "I see you've emerged from whatever little hidey-hole you went in. Have you been a good girl?"

"They don't let good girls in the Circle," said Nissa. She had her arms crossed, one foot propped on the wall behind her, and this was ten times worse than defending her dissertation. Looking calm wouldn't get her a doctorate; it would keep her sire from eating her alive. Metaphorically speaking, anyway. "Which hell did you crawl out of? I know you were dead."

She'd felt the blood tie snap. He _had_ died. He'd murdered her, embraced her, she'd run off, and he'd died. She didn't know how or why. She didn't care.

"Oh, my darling Nissa," said Edgar, and his smile was poison, Ventrue through and through. "You're always so entertaining. Tell me, does it really matter what hell I've come from? I've returned to guide you through the vagaries of unlife, just like a good father ought."

"I cannot honestly think of anything else I want less from you," said Nissa. She didn't smile. Didn't laugh. Just dissolved into smoke and mist and drifted away on the winds.


	9. Lost Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melia was taken years ago. She has never found her place since.

I dream about mama all the time. I barely remember her, just looking at me with her dark eyes, but I think she looks like the woman I dream about. Or maybe it's just wishful thinking. I dream about papa too. He had dark hair, curly, I think. He was skinny, maybe got fat when he got old, but I don't know. I've been looking, but sixty years is a long time. Maybe they're dead. If they're not, they have to be close to it. 

We lived in Cambridge. I think that's where I'm from too. I don't know that I ever saw the faces of the people that took me. I was young, four or five, I think. I had a nightmare, something about animals in a jungle trying to eat me up, and when I woke up, someone was in my room. It was pitch black and they stuck a rag soaked in chloroform over my nose and my mouth. Maybe I screamed before I passed out. I don't remember. I just know I didn't get a look at them. When I woke up, I was in a bed in a cold, grey room with a thin blanket covering me. I don't think I've ever thrown up that much, before or since.

When I crawled out of bed to get a drink of water and a new nightgown, and to find my parents, that's when I noticed the room didn't have any doors or windows. So I started crying, which is what you do when you're a scared little girl. 

I don't remember who took me. I don't know that I ever saw their faces. I was young, four or five, I think. Woke up from a nightmare and there was someone in my room. It was pitch black and they stuck a rag soaked in chloroform over my nose and mouth. Maybe I screamed before I passed out; I don't remember. I woke up in a bed in a cold, grey room. I don't think I've ever thrown up that much, before or since.

When I got out of bed, that's when I noticed the spirits. Not ghosts, that's not my milieu, just the spirits. They were small, tiny things that hadn't been hiding, but none of the other children had noticed them. Can't pinpoint when exactly I awakened. Maybe when I got sick, maybe during my nightmares. Doesn't really matter, I guess. I did, and the spirits took me across the Gauntlet to live with them, and that's the important thing.

Me and the spirits spent years looking for them, you know. I can't track them down. Paperwork in those days was pretty spotty, which is to say I can't even find my birth certificate. Not that I know what hospital I was born in, but I went to all of them and to the Cambridge archives looking. Even checked the suburbs. That part I'm not too sad about; I was looking to destroy it, after all. Would be nice to get a corrosion spirit infused into the ink for a few years and let nature do its work. Maybe a trickster spirit into the microfiche or the computer archives.

I don't properly exist, after all, not according to the paperwork. Hence the last name. Not sure I could be clearer, except if I called myself "Melia Pseudonym" or maybe "Melia This Is Not My Real Name." With the mages, I've been Melia. Mostly. Probably I'll be someone other than her one of these days too, when I get bored with her or when I need attention off me. I haven't been called Bessie in a long time.

Real names are awkward in my line of work anyway. Not just magic, mind you. I don't tend to admit to anyone, but mama's little girl turned to confidence trickery when she left the Gauntlet and got tired of porridge every day. Spirits are really good at lying, and so am I. 

It's funny, but I've lost track of how many names I've used. If Mama and Papa had ever been looking for me, they probably couldn't find me either. I've been Jenny and Sally and Rainbow Moonshine (I got drunk or high a lot with that name) and Amy and Lucy and Madison and Grace, not to mention Hannah a couple times over (it's pretty) and Tara with both pronunciations. Plus three different spellings of Ashley that I can think of. Sophia too, because you wouldn't believe the people who'll pay you if they to remove curses if they think you're descended from Roman witches. I don't even know if I'm Italian. Occasionally I go by Miriam and tell everyone I'm a prophet. 

I've been Katherine with a K and a C and also a few Ys thrown in there for good measure. I've gone by Charlotte and Zenobia (don't ask) and Melody through at least half the eighties. I spent some time as a stock broker: Margaret Patricia Randolph, daughter of Jane Winnifred Smithson, daughter of Wendy Elizabeth Reade. See if you can pick up the thread of that literary reference.

That's right, I'm a lost girl. Lived in the wild with the spirits after I came back past the gauntlet. Picked pockets on the streets before I started running scams on people. Took care of myself, kept myself out of the way of the police and truant officers and spent some time trying to find a bed to sleep in. When you spend years with the spirits, you don't get much in the way of proper schooling. Most of what I first learned came from the spirits, then from books I stole from the local library. 

It's funny, I don't remember when I met Jones. I don't remember quite how, just that I was trying to get some money via a very rich old widow who could spare a few thousand dollars, and he decided to stop me. Which he mostly did, I'll be honest, though I did come out of it with about nine hundred dollars he couldn't find. I ate so well, and for almost a year after that.

He and I kept running into each other, sometimes not even during one of my bouts of trickery, so I clubbed him over the head, dragged him back to my lair, and had my way with him. If he'd said no, I'd have untied him and kicked him out, but he didn't fight me on that one.


	10. Paradigm Shift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melia has a plan. It involves convincing reality it doesn't exist. She's always been an ambitious type.

Most people think they're seeing reality every day. A few philosophers realize that's not all there is to it, but most of those ones get winnowed out of the ranks of academia. Called crazy. A few others get listened to, but people like the Wachowski brothers are in the minority. They spend their time on the internet, trying to convince everyone there's ~something else~ beyond this plane of existence or they start meetup groups inviting initiates to pay exorbitant amounts of money to have their Tarot cards read or learn how to call their inner spirit animal.

I mean, they're not wrong. There's something else beyond this reality - a whole lot of somethings - and they've been watching for millenia. Quiescence, though, has pulled the biggest con job in the history of Earth and convinced everyone that magic doesn't exist.

Almost everyone.

It's keeping people from seeing what's out there, and I'm tired of it. I'm going to turn that on its head. I'm going to convince Quiescence that it doesn't exist. You can't con the honest types, they say, but Quiescence is a liar and a cheat. I’m very good at charming those types.

\--end--


End file.
